Consider the paradox of progress in 2024. As we in the crypto space build trustless systems for decentralized coordination, a company named Multiverse raised $570 million to do the opposite: centralize the training of the next generation of AI workers. This is not a critique. It is a recognition that the infrastructure of human capital formation is the next frontier of value, and it is being captured by the same venture logic we seek to disrupt.
The news arrived through Crypto Briefing, a channel more known for token charts than talent pipelines. Yet the numbers demand attention: a $2.1 billion valuation for a firm that neither trains large language models nor mines blocks. Multiverse places apprentices in enterprise roles—software engineering, data analysis, AI operations—and charges employers for the privilege of shaping their workforce before competitors do. The model is B2B2C, with government subsidies sweetening the bargain for learners. Euan Blair, son of a former UK prime minister, steers the ship. But the vessel is not unique; what matters is the cargo: systemic training for the AI era, wrapped in a for-profit shell.
At heart, this is a story about infrastructure. The blockchain community often fixates on code as the ultimate substrate for value: smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, tokenized assets. But the most stubborn infrastructure is not software—it is culture, skill, and trust in human judgment. Multiverse capitalizes on a gap that no protocol has filled: verifiable, employer-aligned competence in an age where AI demotes expertise into a commodity. “Code is law, but ethics is soul,” I wrote during my 2020 Aave audit manifesto. Here, the code is a curriculum designed in boardrooms, and the soul is the promise that an apprentice will outperform a ChatGPT prompt generator. That promise is worth $570 million to investors betting that corporations will pay premium to outsource their AI onboarding.
The Missing On-Chain Component
Let me dissect this with the same lens I applied to Aave’s interest rate models in 2020. Multiverse’s value chain relies on centralized reputation and bilateral contracts. A learner completes a 12-month apprenticeship with, say, a bank; the bank later hires them full-time; the bank pays Multiverse a fee per placement. There is no immutable record of the learner’s achievements that can be ported to another employer or DAO. The proof of skill lives inside a corporate CRM, not on a public ledger. This is a missed opportunity, and a risk.
In 2021, I curated “Soulbound Truths,” an exhibition where 50 artists minted non-transferable tokens to certify their creative identity. We proved that value can reside in nontransferable credentials. Multiverse could adopt similar primitives: issue each graduate a soulbound token representing their apprenticeship, signed by the employer and the curriculum provider. The token would be verifiable anywhere, immune to fraudulent resumes, and composable with decentralized hiring platforms. Instead, Multiverse builds a walled garden of references.
From my experience translating the Ethereum whitepaper into Portuguese in 2017 and distributing 5,000 physical copies, I learned that translation is not just words—it is values. The Ethereum whitepaper was a technical document, but I added an 80-page ethical commentary because I knew that adoption hinges on shared belief, not just cryptographic efficiency. Multiverse’s curriculum, on the other hand, is a black box. They do not publicly audit their training materials for bias, nor do they publish employment outcomes in a verifiable format. “Transparency isn’t the oxygen of trust,” I wrote in my 2017 commentary. But without verifiability, trust becomes a luxury for insiders.
The Bull Market Trap
We are in a bull market for AI, just as we were for DeFi in 2021. Euphoria masks technical flaws. Freshly funded with $570 million, Multiverse faces the same pressure I saw during the DeFi summer: fast growth at the expense of resilience. In 2020, I spent 600 hours manually auditing Aave V2’s interest rate scripts, finding three critical logic errors that could have drained $4 million. The code was elegant; the assumptions about user behavior were not. Multiverse’s model assumes that enterprises will continue to pay premium for outsourced training even as AI tools become cheaper and university curricula adapt. But what happens when Google releases a free, credentialed AI certification program? What happens when a downturn compresses corporate learning budgets?
The valuation implies a multiple of 10 to 15 times revenue—reasonably optimistic for a growth company but fragile if churn rises. During the bear market of 2022, I retreated to mentor a small cohort of developers. I co-authored “Code as Law, but People as Gods,” an essay on building resilient systems during moral decay. That essay was downloaded 25,000 times, not because it was popular, but because it spoke to a deeper need: sustainable structures that survive hype cycles. Multiverse may be building a moat now, but moats can be bridged by incumbents with deeper pockets.
The Ethical Infrastructure
The term “infrastructure” in crypto usually refers to validators, relayers, or liquidity pools. But the most critical infrastructure for any economy is the method by which it reproduces its workforce. Multiverse is building centralized infrastructure for AI labor. That is not inherently evil, but it must be audited for ethical alignment. In my Verifiable Humanity initiative in 2024, I worked with five AI startups to integrate zero-knowledge proofs for human verification. We built open-source SDKs to prevent AI-generated spam while preserving privacy. The key insight: identity and skill must be both private and trustworthy.
Multiverse’s model could easily slip into a credential treadmill, where learners pay for certificates that depreciate as fast as new models emerge. The alternative is a decentralized, composable credential ecosystem where apprentices can proof their skills to any DAO, traditional employer, or automated hiring bot without intermediation. I am not arguing that Multiverse should become a blockchain company—they should not. But they could become a bridge. They already have the distribution and the trust of enterprises. They could adopt open standards for verifiable credentials, contributing to the same infrastructure I helped build in 2024.
During my bear market retreat, I realized that evangelism is not about shouting during bull markets, but whispering truth during bear markets. The truth here is that Multiverse’s $570 million is a bet on centralized curation over decentralized verification. That bet may pay off, but it will leave graduates dependent on a single reputation source. We in the open source community have a responsibility to build the complementary rails: portable, soulbound credentials that undercut the lock-in.
Contrarian: The Necessity of Centralized Training
Here is the counter-intuitive angle I must articulate, even if it challenges my own biases. Decentralized education, as championed by many Web3 projects, often fails to deliver consistent quality. Anyone can mint a certificate on-chain, but who audits the auditor? Who ensures the curriculum is rigorous? Who fires a bad teacher? Multiverse’s centralized model allows for quality control, feedback loops with employers, and adaptation at speed. The transparency of blockchain alone is not trust; it is just data. Interaction and accountability are messy, human, and inherently centralized. During my 2022 essay, I wrote that “people are the gods”—no protocol can replace judgment.
Multiverse may actually be a necessary first step. Once a critical mass of employers trusts the brand, the next logical step is to make the credentials verifiable and portable. The centralization now could be the cradle for a future decentralized credential standard. I saw this pattern in the early days of Ethereum: centralized exchanges like Coinbase provided the user experience that fiat on-ramp needed, and later became bridges to self-custody. Similarly, Multiverse might produce a generation of workers who demand their achievements be issued as soulbound tokens. Or it might not. The risk is that they become the AOL of education—dominant, proprietary, and eventually overtaken.
Takeaway
The future of work will be built by both centralized training factories and decentralized reputation protocols. The question is not which one wins, but whether we can weave them together. Multiverse’s funding is a call for us in the open source world to build the complementary rails: verifiable, portable, soulbound credentials that empower learners to carry their identity across platforms and economies. Guard the commons, or lose the future. Code is law, but ethics is soul.
